304 - Don't Fight Your Style

When I was in college, I took fashion illustration courses. All of the other girls drew tall lean figures with Parisian features. My girls were awkward cartoonish things with mis-shapen eyes and giant poofs of hair that orbited their tiny faces. "Don't fight your style," my instructor would say. "Work with whatever comes out naturally."

I hated my style. I smudged the graphite figures into oblivion, trying to learn how to create European swooshy lines. "SWOOSH" I said aloud. "SCRUNCH" my pencil would go, sometimes tearing actual holes through the page. "Where'd you learn how to hold a pencil?" a classmate once asked me, genuinely curious. My hand makes an almost perfect fist around all writing utensils, clutching them as though they might save my life.

I think my life is a constant effort to fight my style, seeing things I could be, perhaps, if only. Effortlessly cool girls. They make it looks so easy.

Every once in a while, though, I succumb to what comes naturally. That's when you get an outfit like this, sloppy and a bit bohemian perhaps, oddball and messy.